Bratislava 15-23 July 2018

The 4th ECPR Teaching and learning summer school was attended by 13 PhD students and early career academics working at different institutions across the globe: USA, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Austria, Kosovo, Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Pakistan and Hong Kong.

Participants visiting Danubiana in Bratislava

Participants visiting Danubiana in Bratislava

The first sessions introduced participants to topics including student-centered class design, facilitation of seminars, online and blended teaching, supervision and assessment as well as to some fundamental concepts from university pedagogy such as constructive alignment, reflective teaching and scholarship of teaching and learning. Specialized sessions at this year’s summer school considered the use of simulations for political science classes and discussed how to teach sensitive issues and how to teach 

politics at all in the current era of political extremes.

The summer school concluded with 15-minute teaching demonstrations that gave participants an opportunity put their newly acquired skills and knowledge in particle. Peer and facilitator feedback and a short reflection paper about their teaching helped participants to think about how they would improve y their teaching in the future.

As in previous years, the summer school participants were amazing and greatly contributed to the summer school’s success by arriving prepared and by actively engaged during the summers school.

We look forward to convening our next summer school, which will be held 6-13 July in 2020 in Bratislava. The call will be out in November 2019.


See what participants had to say at the end of the summer school:

“All instructors were motivated, approachable and had our best interests in mind, I really appreciated this.”

“Very prepared, professional and open-minded. Constructive criticism helped a lot.”

“I think this summer school is a good and inspiring opportunity to structure the knowledge and learn new approaches. I will recommend it to my colleagues and to my department as a good environment to improve teaching skills.”

“Very good summer school on the whole, I enjoyed it and I obtained useful knowledge that can help me improve my teaching.”

“I would like to thank the organizers for doing great job in preparing the summer school. I enjoyed it and learnt a lot.”

“I do hope that you develop the programme further as I have not seen a similar Summer School anywhere in Europe.”